


while spring is in the world

by madamebadger



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Courtly Love, F/F, Falling In Love, First Kiss, Kissing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-28
Updated: 2015-03-28
Packaged: 2018-03-19 23:56:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,034
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3628983
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/madamebadger/pseuds/madamebadger
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The realization comes over Josephine with the slow warmth of the sun slipping across the room on a golden afternoon: she would like to kiss Cassandra.</p>
            </blockquote>





	while spring is in the world

**Author's Note:**

  * For [openended](https://archiveofourown.org/users/openended/gifts).



> Written for the prompt "Basorexia - An overwhelming desire to kiss."

The realization comes over Josephine with the slow warmth of the sun slipping across the room on a golden afternoon: she would like to kiss Cassandra.

The slowness of the realization is in itself a kind of luxury. Decisions at Skyhold must be made swiftly and decisively, more often than not. There is not time for slowly considering options; action must already be delayed by the time it takes to send messages and courier and agents and soldiers across half of Thedas, and they cannot slow them further by lengthy consideration. In truth, this is not a great burden for her. Josephine has been accustomed to making decisions on behalf of her family—it is one of the ways that she and Yvette ruffle one another's feathers, that she is swift in her choices and Yvette would rather linger and dally. (Of course, Yvette would put it another way: that Josephine is simply _bossy._ She is... perhaps not entirely wrong.)

But this, ah, this desire, this she can linger over, like the small cups of very strong coffee she used to sip in Val Royeaux, at cafes with flowers on the tables.

It is, perhaps, not entirely surprising. Josephine has always been drawn to beauty, in both men and women but more often in women. And Cassandra is very beautiful, although there is something about her beauty, like the opposite of a mirage: people seem to overlook it at first, and if they are not observant they may overlook it entirely, not see past the scowl and the scar and the shield. And then suddenly you are up close and, oh, there is the sensuality of her mouth, the deep brilliant amber of her eyes.

So, yes, the realization: she would like to kiss Cassandra. (Or perhaps have Cassandra kiss her. She has not decided yet, and is keeping open the pleasant option of 'both.')

It is not something that is likely ever, ever to happen, for so many reasons. Cassandra is proper and stoic and honorable to a fault, and on top of that Josephine has no idea if she is even interested in women. But there is no harm in indulging a daydream—and Cassandra, the valiant warrior with her dry humor and her secret but extravagant kindnesses and her rare sun-warm smiles, is worthy of a hundred daydreams.

She thinks about kissing Cassandra in the gardens in the late afternoon, with the embrium and crystal grace in bloom and the sun slanting low red-gold and Cassandra's hands gentle on her face. She thinks about kissing Cassandra in the courtyard, in front of everyone, with the Chargers whooping and Sera laughing her head off and neither of them caring. She thinks about kissing Cassandra at the front gates after a journey, Cassandra slipping down off her horse and into her arms, wild with smoke and leather and the cold bright mountain air. She thinks about kissing Cassandra up on the ramparts at night, with the moon full and brilliant in the clear icy black of the night sky, and Cassandra's mouth the warmest thing in the world. She thinks about kissing Cassandra in the privacy of her room, slow and quiet and lingering as the fire burns low.

She is being very quiet about it, very secretive. Leliana has no doubt guessed, and some day Leliana will ask—and Josephine will answer—but she has not yet. For now Josephine is enjoying the pleasure of keeping it entirely to herself, as she can keep so few things, with the only tell the way the thoughts make her pulse flutter like a moth in her throat.

She could not say what it is in the end that makes her—in her own subtle way—bold. Perhaps it is the nearness of the danger to them all, the perilousness of life, brought so clearly to her by Haven. Perhaps it is that thinking so often of kissing Cassandra has muddled both her sense and her judgment. Perhaps it is simply that she wishes to. It is not an errand that she would delegate even to her most trusted assistant: she makes the bouquet herself—blue salvia woven through with the purest white morning glory—and leaves it threaded through the handle of the door to Cassandra's room, the day that they are due to return. (Better to leave it in the windowsill, but Cassandra is a sensible woman, and locks her door when she isn't there.)

She does not expect anything of it, truly, except perhaps to make Cassandra smile—and she is careful not to watch too closely for that smile, lest she be found out.

It is a week later that she arrives in her study to find a silk scarf, carefully folded, atop her desk. It is a beautiful thing, dyed the same deep red as the embroidery on Josephine's favorite dinner-dress. It smells sweet, like roses—no, like the softer and more haunting scent of dried rose petals.

She wears it to dinner with the dress that it matches, tied around her throat, and—oh. Cassandra is there, although she avoids these dinners as often as she possibly can, and Casandra is watching her, she is sure of it. Well. She is nearly sure of it. She is a professional, she has kept her voice clear and her hands steady in the most tense of negotiations, and yet now she must tighten her fingers in her lap to keep her hands from shaking. 

(She thinks about kissing Cassandra here, now, Cassandra's hands solid against her waist, tugging her closer, shocking every dignitary in the place. _No_. But.)

"Oh," the Inquisitor says, afterwards, as Josephine makes her way back to the study. "Cassandra's scarf suit you so well! It matches your dress perfectly." Josephine's heart thunders and she tries to think of an answer, but the Inquisitor continues blithely on, "I assume she found some way to clean it? It smelled of cave when we found it—that's where it was, I don't know if she told you, in a chest through a cave in... I can't remember exactly, they all start to blur together after a while—but she insisted she wanted it, and I didn't see any reason to tell her no. I can see why, it looks lovely."

"Yes, thank you," Josephine says. (She is thinking, now, of Cassandra, carefully hand-washing the silk, layering it with dried rose petals to sweeten it.)

The Inquisitor is leaving again in three days, and Cassandra with her. (She thinks about kissing Cassandra on the long stairs down from the great hall, a kiss to send her off. She thinks about kissing Cassandra in the stables as she readies her horse for the journey, private in the shadowy dimness. She thinks, she thinks, she thinks.) Josephine knows every popular romantic gesture for at least four countries; this should not be so difficult.

And yet it is, and finally in desperation she confesses all to Leliana, who looks at her in laughing affection and mock-dismay and says, " _Cassandra_?"

"You have _seen_ her, surely?" Josephine says, exasperated, into her cup of wine, and Leliana laughs again, and lays her hand softly over Josephine's in a way that has no mockery in it at all, and suggests a plan.

The handkerchief is one of her best, but it is one of the ones that does not bear her initials. It is pure white edged in gold, and—here is Leliana's masterstroke—it is dabbed with Josephine's favorite scent, her own flower-water blend that is sweet but not too sweet. It is left, properly, on the windowsill of Cassandra's room, because a locked door is no match for the Nightingale.

And then Cassandra goes away again, without having said anything, and Josephine waits. (She thinks of kissing Cassandra, and now it doesn't matter where, it doesn't matter, except that it's Cassandra, her strong hands and her lips with their surprising gentleness. Cassandra, bold and shy, fierce and kind. It never mattered where, truly, did it?)

When they return, finally, Cassandra sends a message to her by runner, a request to meet. "Somewhere private," it says, and Josephine replies in the assent, suggests her own sitting room—not an improper place no matter what the message; she entertains guests there frequently, it is why she has a sitting room of her own at all. 

She wears the scarf, not around her throat but at her wrist, in a style that was popular in Orlais some years back. The gesture terrifies her with its obvious boldness. She does it anyway.

When Cassandra arrives at her room, she has something in her hand, and Josephine realizes with a lurch that it is her handkerchief. It is no longer pristine white; it is somewhat discolored and much crumpled, as if—as if Cassandra has been carrying it with her. Carrying it with her on the road and on the field, and—

"I think this is yours," Cassandra says, with her habitual abruptness, once the door is shut.

"Yes," Josephine says. "And... the scarf. That was—?"

"From me, yes," Cassandra says. She looks away and then sharply back. Her expression is guarded but there is a strange vulnerability in her eyes that makes Josephine's heart ache, almost like the ache of wanting to weep, but not for sorrow, not quite. "I am not good at these... gestures."

"You're doing fine so far," Josephine says, her chest feeling tight, her pulse thrumming, thrumming, hot and hard in her throat.

"Books," Cassandra says. "I read them, I mean, that's how I—I... read a great deal. But in the books it is generally men and women, and I was not sure which role I was meant to play. And—"

Josephine feels as if she is dreaming as she steps forward, closes the distance between them. She has dreamed this so many times, hasn't she? Kissing Cassandra. She lays her hands lightly on Cassandra's shoulders—oh, she is so tall; somehow Josephine hadn't realized quite how tall, having never been this close to her before—and Cassandra tenses but doesn't pull away. "You don't have to play any role at all," she says. "I know you don't like games."

She feels the muscles of Cassandra's neck relax at that. "Josephine," she begins, and then hesitates.

Oh, she has dreamed this in a hundred ways, a thousand, but it is nothing like the reality, the flicker of Cassandra's eyelids, the brilliance of her eyes, her lips parted a little, every detail so shockingly clear, burning itself into Josephine's memory. "Let me," she whispers, and Cassandra nods, and Josephine rises up on her toes as Cassandra bends to meet her.

She was not wrong about one thing: Cassandra's mouth is warm against hers, and soft despite her strength. And she also was not wrong that Cassandra's hands would come up around her waist, solid and sure even in the face of Cassandra's dear, unsure little inhalation against her mouth. But she did not know—how could she?—what it would feel like to slide her hands along Cassandra's cheekbones just for the pleasure of touching her, to wrap her arms around her shoulders, to fall into the kiss, her heart unfurling like wings in her chest, beating in flight.

After what feels like a long, long time, they part, and Cassandra smiles at her, that rare real smile that is so sweet. "Well," she says, fingertips tightening in Josephine's sash. "I suppose I didn't misread you after all. I was afraid—"

"No," Josephine says. "I have been thinking about this... a long time." And she will keep thinking about it. It is true that a single real kiss is better than a thousand imagined ones... but oh, now that she knows the taste of Cassandra's lips, the press of her hands, her eyes heavy-lidded and warm, how can she not dream a thousand more?

"Well, then," Cassandra says, with a softness in her voice that is entirely new, and bends her head to kiss her again. And Josephine lifts herself up, up to meet her, into the exultation of it, a hope unspoken but still fulfilled.

**Author's Note:**

> The title is from e.e. cummings' poem:
>
>> since feeling is first  
> who pays any attention  
> to the syntax of things  
> will never wholly kiss you;  
> wholly to be a fool  
> while Spring is in the world
>> 
>> my blood approves,  
> and kisses are a better fate  
> than wisdom  
> lady i swear by all flowers. Don't cry  
> \--the best gesture of my brain is less than  
> your eyelids' flutter which says
>> 
>> we are for each other: then  
> laugh, leaning back in my arms  
> for life's not a paragraph
>> 
>> And death i think is no parenthesis
> 
>   
> But lest I seem too pretentious, I must also admit to having had Sixpence None the Richer's "Kiss Me" on repeat while writing it.


End file.
